Friday, March 16, 2018

Receiving books from authors we are
unfamiliar with is always an exciting event. It leads us to a new door wherein
we wonder what awaits on the other side; something fantastically good,
something mediocre or, heaven forbid, something gawd awful. We are delighted to
report that P.J. Thorndyke’s “Curse of the Blood Fiends” lands solidly in that
first grouping and with a tremendous splash. Enough so that we really hope you’ll
take this review to heart and run and get your own copy. Really, it is that
much fun.

The time is World War II and the
military is looking for any advantage it can muster to help us win our
campaigns in both Europe and the South Pacific. To that end they sponsor a mad
scientist’s expedition to the Rain Forest of the Amazon. It is led by a well
known big-game warden named Henry Gross. The scientist is looking for a leaf
based chemical that can revive the dead with the intent on using it to bring
back fallen GIs and sending them back into combat as unyielding zombies.

No sooner is the compound
discovered, then Gross is bitten by jungle werewolf and is then himself
infected with the curse. He flees the base and returns to his home in Los
Angeles in hopes of finding a cure him of his beastly condition. Instead, after
a series of depressing encounters, Gross turns into his new hairy persona and
begins biting others. Here the entire plot does a wild detour. It seems Gross’ bite
not only changes humans into werewolves, but it also transforms others in to
vampires.All too soon Tinsel Town is
being overrun with these nocturnal monsters. The city police find themselves
overwhelmed with creatures far beyond their understanding and abilities to deal
with.

Amidst all this action, we find Rosa
Bridger, a lady P.I. engaged to a Hollowood leading man. Bridger, in trying to
locate a lost starlet, uncovers a vampire nest in Beverly Hills where captive
humans are being held as living blood banks to feed to undead. Oh, and did we
mention that her fiancee’s younger brother is attempting to revive a thousand
year old mummy in the family’s mansion?

What P.J. Thorndyke has done is
given us all the classic Universal Monsters and brought them together albeit in
new and original ways culminating in several over-the-top clashes that had this
reviewer cheering wildly. Filled with panache, his prose is controlled and
creates a steady pace that never once lets up leading the reader to one of the
most satisfying climaxes this side of a Saturday Afternoon Monster
Matinee.“Curse of the Blood Fiends” is
old-fashion thrills, spills and fun. The kind you thought lost forever. Well,
you were wrong. This book has it all. Now go buy a copy!

Monday, February 26, 2018

This is the third R. S. Belcher
novel we’ve read in the past two years and we are fast becoming devoted fans.
Whereas the first two were part of a weird western series, “Nightwise” is a twisted,
dark tale of modern witchcraft and wizardry unafraid of venturing into horrific
fields of imagination.

Latham Ballard is a wizard whose
name is known throughout the magic world; referred to as The Life. At a child,
mentored by his Granny, Latham used his supernatural powers to revive a dead
squirrel. From that point on there was no turning back and his life became one
bizarre adventure after another; most involving deadly out-of-this world
battles with all manner of fantastic creatures. In fact, he caused so much
trouble, the Nightwise, an organization of wizards devoted to protecting
humanity, expelled him. This came as no surprise to Ballard, as he was never
comfortable in the hero role and saw himself as a pure, unadulterated selfish
bastard.

As the books opens, Ballard visits
one of his remaining friends, another wizard named Branco Boj who is dying of
AIDS. Years earlier, Boj’s wife had been savagely butchered by a wizard named
Dusan Slorzack. Boj ask Ballard to find Slorzack and kill him. Ballard agrees
and thus the chase begins though the rogue wizard has no real idea what a
powerful mage he is hunting.

It soon begins clear to Ballard,
that Slorzack is a heartless killer able to elude even the most complex
searching techniques, both technical and magical. Then, along the hunt, Ballard
uncovers a new type of American made magic born during the early days of the
country’s history. All of which is centered around a mystical place called The
Greenway. What is this strange alien magic all about and what is the
significance of The Greenway to Dusan Slorzack?

R.S. Belcher pulls out all the stops
in delivering a brutal story about the true meanings of the human heart;
loneliness, love, despair, anger, and unyielding hope against the cruelest
fates. It is a brilliant page turner and
carves another notch in this writer’s remarkable career. If you aren’t familiar
with him, we urge you to do so now and enjoy the ride. He won’t let you down.

Tuesday, February 13, 2018

One of the tragedies of the original
pulp era was the lack of recognition given to the brilliant artists of that
time. Every single week hundreds of pulp titles hit the newsstands, each graced
with a gorgeous, colorful cover paintings and filled with dozens of wonderful
black and illustrations. Whereas these populace magazines were snobbishly
ignored by the purveyors of the uppercrust, academia including and no effort
was made to save this amazing art. It has been reported that over 90% of all
those great covers and illustrations were destroyed and lost to us forever,
save in the fading pages of the actual mags, some eighty years or older today.

After World War Two, pulps evolved into
comics for kids and two new adult formats to continue the publication of action
adventure stories. One was the small paperback designed to be easily carried in
one’s back-pocket and produced on the cheap. The other, and more direct descend
of the original pulps, was the men’s adventure magazines, hereto referred to as
MAGS. From the 50s to early 70s they proliferated in drugstores racks via
dozens of titles all aimed at the World War II veterans looking for stories
featuring rugged, individuals not afraid to take on the world. The MAMS catered
to tales of war heroes, explorers, tough cops and rebel bikers. It was a cornucopia
of he-man virility that oozed off every page.

Accompanying these tales was the
macho art; a vital element of the entire package. Like their smaller, golden
age predecessors, the MAMS were chock full of amazing illustrations, most done
in long double page formats while offering up some of the greatest in-your face
all action scenes ever put on a cover. Here were soldiers combating
overwhelming odds, or treasure hunters battled savage beasts of every kind
imaginable while at the same time protecting some half-clad buxom babe. They
were simply men’s fantasies brought to stunning visual reality as created a
dozen or so remarkable artists.

One such was Samson Pollen and now
editors Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle have collected dozens of his more
spectacular pieces. Each is represented into versions; first showcasing the
actual artwork alone and then the same image as surrounded as folded into the
magazine’s layout with text and titles etc. It is a truly effective
demonstration of the format challenges posed to Pollen and his peers. One of
this book’s most intriguing parts is Pollen’s own memoirs which he shared with
co-author Doyle. At 86, the veteran illustrator’s tales of his work-for-hire
experiences as a professional illustrator are fascinating. Pollen never assumed
he was creating anything but commercial art and his job, as he saw it, was to give
the editors what they wanted. No matter how silly those requests often times
appeared to be. He was told to draw this or that and he did. He was a workman
artist.

Today, one gets the sense that he is
happily bemused at how valuable his art has become and the status it has
achieved in the scheme of things. In this day of digital art, illustrators are
a dying breed and one wonders if future generations will ever see their like
again. For now we can only tip our pulp fedoras to Mr. Deis & Mr. Doyle for
saving work of this true master; Samson Pollen.

Friday, February 09, 2018

Dear Readers, this certainly will
not be one of my regular reviews. You see the subject matter is much too
personal for me and we need to share much more than a few declarative
paragraphs concerning this wonderful little book. So time for some history. In
the early 80s, pre-PC and internet time, I had joined a group via snail-mail
correspondence called SPWAO; the Small Press Writers & Artists
Organization. We were made of up both amateur and professional creators all
working in one fashion or another with small press. Among that group was Texas
based professional sci-fi and fantasy writer Ardath Mayhar. If you’ll allow me
to name drop here, the group also included among its ranks Charles Saunders,
Richard & Wendy Pini and Kevin Anderson; all of which I’m sure you readily
recognized.

We had officers, collected dues and
published a monthly newsletter. At one point I was elected the President and
responsible for putting out that newsletter. It was along this time that I
began a friendly correspondence with Ardath not realizing it would soon become
a life-saver for me. Note, members of SPWAO were set on achieving
professionalism in various genres, from books to comics. Most of my energies
directed towards the latter without much thought at all to novel writing.

Then came my divorce and my world turned
upside down. Having three small children unable to comprehend exactly why their
father was leaving caused me months of pain and anguish. At one point I let
some of this out in a letter to Ardath, this kindly grandmother writer from
Texas, as a way of maybe dispelling a little of the hurt I was dealing with.
Her response was a rapid reply in which she suggested, “Why don’t we write a
book together. It might help take your mind off the sadness.”She even let me devise the subject matter and
plot and we went at it. Six months later her agent sold “Trail of the Seahawks”
to TSR’s new Windwalker paperback line and I was a published author.

And of course, as Ardath was well
aware, the rest of my life did settle out. My weekly visitations with my
wonderful children eventually proved to them my continued love and devotion and
within the next few years some kind of normalcy returned to all of us. Oh, and
Ardath and me went on to write two more books together, “Monkey Station” and
“Witchfire.” I would have loved to have done more, but she was then in her late
70s and let me know I was good enough to fly on my own, whereas she still had
too many of her own tales to tell in whatever time she had left.

That’s the personal stuff.Now here’s the clinical.Ardath Mayhar Feb 20 – 1930 to Feb 1st
2012 (aged 81) began writing professionally in 1979. She was nominated for the
Mark Twain Award and won the Balrog Award for a horror narrative poem in
Masques 1. In 2008 she was honored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers
of America as an Author Emeritus. She wrote over sixty books ranging from
sci-fi to horror to young adult to historical to westerns; with some work under
the pseudonym Frank Cannon, Frances Hurst, and John Killdeer. Mrs. Mayhar also
shared her knowledge and skills of writing with many people through the Writer’s
Digest correspondence courses.

Recently I learned that in 1996
Ardath compiled a rambling, intimate memoir of her life after having been
pestered by friends to do so. That book is “Strange View From a Skewed Orbit.”It is a truly wonderful glimpse into the
heart and mind of a remarkable woman who was descended of pioneer stock. It is
a glimpse of both the rugged landscape of East Texas but also of a culture that
prides individualism and old fashion grit. In the book’s final few essays,
Ardath lambast the wishy-washy nonsense that is today’s feminism, decrying
pampered women who have swallowed the entire hogwash philosophy of victimhood.
In her own words, “It is not the function of government to make life easy for
anyone, rich or poor, male or female, black white, yellow or red. That is a
sure route to dependency. We are our own motivators, and if we do not use our strength,
our intelligence, and our determination to achieve what we are capable of
doing, the fault lies with us, not some anonymous “white male establishment.””

It is one of my life’s major
disappointments that we never actually got to meet in this world. But believe
me, that is a meeting that will certainly take place in the next. Till then,
every time I sit down to write, I know I’ve a friend looking down from on high.

Wednesday, February 07, 2018

We make no bones that we are devoted
fans of this new pulp series. Special Agent Pendergast and his revolving cast
of supporting characters are truly colorful and memorable. In this, the sixteen
entry, the authors pick up from the dramatic cliffhanger they ended book
fifteen, “Crimson Shore.” We won’t tell you what that dangling question was on
the off chance some of you are playing catch up and have yet to read it.

Rather we will say the tale opens
with Pendergast away from his home on Riverside Drive in New York City, leaving
his ward, Constance Greene, chauffeur and bodyguard Proctor and household
keeper, Mrs. Trask, to fend for themsevles. Not a good thing when his younger
brother, supposedly dead, invades the domicile, subdues Proctor and kidnaps Ms.
Greene. Here we should let you know, Diogenes is as great a villain as his
brother is a hero. A psychotic genius whose level of cruelty is beyond measure
and the one true advisory our protagonist has yet to adequately best.

And with that kidnapping begins a
globe trotting chase around the glove, as a frantic Proctor, whose
responsibility it was to protect the girl, spares no effort or money to go
after them wherever they are bound. That this madcap race takes up the first
quarter if the entire book will tell you at what a frenetic pace “The Obsidian
Chamber” is propelled. By the time our hero does arrive on the scene, having
barely escaped the clutches of a gang of drug smugglers off the coast of Maine,
we readers are whipping through pages faster and faster. How on earth is
Pendergast ever going to get up to speed? And therein lays the talent of this
superb writing team in that they set out that solution so logically via what
past books have established; that he is no mere mortal. Pendergast is a man of
superior intellect and imagination and he how he employs those talents to solve
the most bizarre challenge he has ever faced is the delight of this book.

As with all series pulp adventures,
some often time feel like obligatory fillers and are soon forgotten when a new
chapter arrives. While others, like “The Obsidian Chamber” hit so many right
notes as to create a melody masterpiece of plotting and pace so spectacular
that the tune will reverberate in your minds long after you’ve finished the
last page.

Thursday, January 25, 2018

We’ve often said the fun of writing
a review blog is discovering new and exciting talent. Case in point this book sent
to us by authors Habiger and Kissee, “Unremarkable.” From the book design it is
easy enough to infer that the story deals with death and violence and sure
enough it kicks off fast in those directions.

The year is 1929 and young Saul
Imbierowicz is a postal clerk in Chicago. For an average fellow, his life has
been what most people would consider dull and boring. But when he meets a
vivacious redhead named Moira a few days before Valentine’s Day, things seem to
be changing for the better. Moira is a beauty and Saul can’t believe his good
luck. When she asks him to accompany her on an errand to the North Side, he
willingly agrees to tag along. There isn’t much he wouldn’t do for the girl.

Then they find themselves walking
into one of the most celebrated gangland shootings in American history, the St.
Valentine’s Massacre wherein seven of Al Capone’s men were gunned in a street
corner garage by members of the Irish Mob under the orders of Bugs Moran.
Tragically Moira and Saul arrive at the location while bullets are still flying
and Moira is shot. Shocked and frightened at her body lying in a pool of blood,
Saul flees in horror unable to deal with the violence suddenly foisted upon
him.

As if that wasn’t enough to totally
ruin his life, he is then grabbed by several of Moran’s thugs and brought to a
meeting with the mob boss. Moran informs him that federal agents, who maintain
offices in the same building as the post office, have come into possession of
Frank Capone’s tax accounting records. The data in those books would be
sufficient to put Al away for a very long time. Something Moran wants to assure
happens. Fearing Capone might somehow steal the books from the feds, he wants
Saul to do it first and then bring those books to him. If Saul doesn’t do as he
demands, Moran will have his parents and sister killed.

The authors waste no time in
building the suspense and the narrative moves at a very steady pace. Saul is
the innocent protagonist who, for no fault of his own, finds himself in a
seemingly inescapable dilemma. Can he actually do what Moran wants; break into
the feds’ offices and steal the Capone books? As he grapples with this
question, he is suddenly set upon by the very agents who occupy those offices.
They know of his presence at the street corner during the shooting and want to
know what happened to Moira? If poor Saul was mixed-up before, this new wrinkle
totally leaves him confused.Moira’s
dead, isn’t she? After all, he saw her die. Or did he?And if she is somehow alive, where is she and
how is she involved with the entire affair?

“Unremarkable” is a really fun read
that will keep readers guessing from chapter to chapter. The characters are one
hundred percent authentic and the underlying mystery reveals itself slowly like
a many layered onion. It is a thriller in the best sense of the word and one we
highly applaud. Do yourselves a favor and pick up a copy.

Saturday, January 13, 2018

In the first book of this series, a
divorced unemployed accountant named Martin Talbot uncovered a startling secret
upon opening the contents of his mother’s effects.In the 1950s and 60s, his mother, then Judy
Cooper, donned a masked and became a crime fighting vigilante known as the
Black Stiletto. Now she suffers from Alzheimer’s and is committed to medical institution.
In her diaries, part of the cache he discovers, he learns that as a teenager,
Judy had run away from her abusive stepfather in Texas to begin a new life in
New York City. There she came under the tutelage of an exboxer named Freddie who
taught her how to fight. She later added to her martial skills by studying both
judo and karate from a Japanese sensei. Eventually she had a romantic tryst
with a young man who she later learned was part of the Mafia. When he was
murdered, Judy decided to mete out her own justice in the guise of her secret
identity. By the book’s finale, Martin is forced to accept the realities of his
discoveries and keep them a secret from everyone including his own daughter,
Gina, who adores her grandmother.

With “Black & White,” the saga continues
and again is narrated by both Martin in the present and by sections of Judy’s
detailed diaries showcasing her exploits. For Judy the year is 1959 and the
country is undergoing radical changes. Many are due in part to the racial
tensions boiling up in the urban centers of America’s fast growing cities.
Harlem has become a blacks-only community and a gangster named Carl Purdy has
risen to power. He has grandiose ambitions and challenges the Italian families
for control of the growing drug trade.

As the Black Stiletto enters the
fray, she finds herself hunted by a smart and handsome F.B.I. agent named John
Richardson. Through a series of dangerous outings, the Stiletto manages to
start a truly weird, and romantic, relationship with the dedicated agent. While
their feelings for each other threaten both of them, Judy finds herself
embroiled in the Harlem gang war and agreeing to a truly bizarre alliance with
a Mafia Don. Meanwhile, in our time, son Martin has unearthed an actual film
reel of Judy in her Black Stiletto get-up and is being blackmailed by a small time
New York thug who also owns a copy of the same film.

Once again, Raymond Benson weaves
twin stories, interweaving them skillfully while heightening the suspense with
each new chapter so that the reader is rewarded with not one but two exciting
and dramatic climaxes. What makes this book a winner, as was the first, is his
knack of bringing Judy Cooper to life with all her courage, naiveté and sincere
empathy for others. She is a wonderful character; one you really should get to
know.